“If you care about children, parents, and communities, you can’t vote for Bernie Sanders. He’s the teachers’ union candidate.”

This is the message educational opportunity activist (and CEO of Education Post) Chris Stewart posted on Twitter over the weekend.

Too many parrot this type of argument, and it’s hurting our movement.

Never mind that the teachers union didn’t endorse Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election, and an endorsement this time around remains a long shot.

The idea that the millions of Bernie supporters lined up to vote for him don’t care about children, parents, or communities is weak.

It’s also false.

Bernie supporters believe Medicare for All, free college, new housing laws and student loan forgiveness – to name just a few issues – will help a great many children, parents, and communities.
I told Stewart that.

His response?

“Middle class warriors unite.”

I organize hundreds of thousands of lower-income parents in Florida, and many of them are single-issue voters when it comes to statewide elections. State lawmakers control state programs, such as education choice. Our governor, state representatives and state senators – along with local school board members – are finding it increasingly difficult to get elected if they oppose vouchers, scholarships and charters. Programs many parents credit with saving their children’s lives.

National elections are more nuanced, and most of us on the left try to balance all our concerns – women’s rights, climate change, gun violence, education of all types – when considering who to support.
Are these strictly middle class concerns? Perhaps.

I don’t know many people in the shrinking middle class, so I’ll have to take Stewart’s word on that one. Perhaps he knows them better than I do.

Last week, I attended 50CAN’s summit in Connecticut, and Howard Fuller was our keynote speaker. He said: “How do you get to be progressive if you oppose the self-determination of a people? And this fool from Vermont don’t know nothin’ bout what’s happening on 29th and Capitol Drive.”

Now that’s an interesting argument! It’s also clear, concise and well under 280 characters.
It also has the added benefit of being true. Bernie does not understand what life is like for millions of children zoned out of a decent educational option.

There are compelling reasons why Bernie Sanders, and his supporters, must reconsider their views on charter schools and voucher programs. Let’s articulate the reasons and encourage those inclined to agree with us a chance to catch up.

I wouldn’t suggest it if I hadn’t seen it work. Multiple times.

We all have roles to play. My role is to work with the right to advance the cause of education choice for all children. I’ve devoted my career to that cause.

Part of my role also includes representing the people with whom I identify in other ways. Showing those I work with on the right, many of whom I respect and admire, that feminist, socialist, agnostics are more than the stereotypes caricatured on Fox News.

I mingle with righties and plant seeds, knowing many of my colleagues around the country have never met a socialist in person. They usually discover my hardcore liberal leanings early on and hardly ever hide their surprise.

In many instances, I’m the only true progressive they’ve ever met. Maybe the only one they will ever meet.

I answer their questions. I listen to them. I am polite, funny and endearing. Most, if not all, end up respecting me despite themselves.

Then I go back to my family reunions, neighborhood parties, ACLU meetings and Bernie Sanders rallies and do the exact same thing.

I mingle with lefties and plant seeds. When someone rails against charter schools or vouchers, I tell them to check their privilege. I remind them that they benefit from education choice and oppose it only for people who can’t afford it. I show those on my side for most issues that ed choicers are more than the stereotypes caricatured on “Democracy Now!”

They can’t quite believe someone actively working for progressive causes supports all ed choice, not just the buy-a-house-in-a-good-neighborhood variety that works so well for them.

This is what I’ve seen as a result, from both sides: People think about issues in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.

On the right, they’re open-minded because I support the cause to which they too have devoted a great deal of their professional life.

Many who lead different segments of our movement don’t subscribe to the belief that when we use weak arguments and fail to convince potential allies, we are to blame. Not them.

The fault, as always, lies with us.

And that’s OK, if we learn from it. Refine our arguments. Take a different tack.

It’s not OK if we keep repeating the same mistakes.

Talk to those of us who live and breathe on the side you’re trying to persuade. If you want to convert white, suburban, college-educated, left-leaning parents – and you do, believe me – then pay attention to the one writing this.

Argue more effectively.

Work a different angle than, “If you don’t agree with me, you don’t care about kids.”

Regardless of issue or geographic location, parents often are the best advocates for their children’s educational options.

Florida frequently is viewed as a model for the school choice movement, especially when it comes to parent advocacy. So why is it so hard for other states to replicate the Sunshine State’s methods?

This is the question I’m pondering as I reflect on a recent parent organizer training in Milwaukee hosted by EdChoice, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to advance a K-12 education system where all families are free to choose the most appropriate learning environment for their children.

Specifically, I’m wondering: How do we work through all the politics and enact change? What type of messaging do we need to share with parents who feel entitled to have educational options but don’t feel compelled to fight for it?

These are tough questions that don’t have easy answers. But in my opinion, one of the givens is that you need to have some skin in the game.

Anyone who has ever mobilized groups of people will tell you it’s not easy. One strategy that has worked in Florida for Step Up For Students, a state-approved nonprofit scholarship funding organization that helps administer five scholarships, has been building and maintaining a solid grassroots effort. A tactic connected to that strategy was the creation of a database of parent contacts that can activate parents – on as as-needed basis – in certain geographic areas.

How do we identify those parents and convince them to work with us? That’s a recurring question for many organizers, and one that comes up at almost every organizer training I attend.

I suppose there’s no right or wrong way. It may be best to just reach out to a school and offer to host a presentation during a parent meeting. Hand out fliers during a school sporting event. Partner with other organizations who have a connection to the school to amplify your message.

Sometimes obstacles turn out to be opportunities in disguise when it comes to organizing parents.

Say something negative appears in the media about a school’s academic performance. This can be a chance to rally parents by encouraging them to respond to the story, whether in print or online, by writing letters to the editor or even penning an opinion piece.

It’s amazing the lengths parents will go to when offered a little encouragement and some clear direction.

Clear direction is key when working in the political arena. While a bill working its way through committee can be intimidating to families who are unfamiliar with that arena, those individuals often are perfectly suited to lead a grassroots groundswell. Parents are essential because they are real people with real experiences. They are directly impacted by what is being proposed, and they often are the most passionate speakers in the room when a bill comes to the floor.

Consider arranging for the parents in your network to meet with their local lawmakers and teach them how to speak up – person – during the session. A well-spoken, flesh-and-blood constituent can change hearts and minds. Remember that attending one meeting or committee hearing is not enough. Make it a point to bring your grassroots delegation to as many legislative events as possible. And if a parent is unwilling or unable to speak, at least have that individual in the room to show support.

Our recent experience demonstrates that his or her presence can make a difference.

This past legislative session, much was at stake for nearly 14,000 families on the waitlist for a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. Dozens of those waitlist families, and dozens more who have been scholarship recipients, traveled to the state capitol to testify. Others attended delegation meetings, and some met one on one with their senators and representatives – those opposed as well as in favor of creating a new scholarship program to ease the waitlist.

Ana Garcia’s home education cluster includes a total of seven students, including five with autism who use the Gardiner Scholarship, an education savings account in Florida for students with special needs. Joining Garcia (at front left) on a field trip to Zoo Miami last month was, from left to right, her husband Daniel; her son Kevin, 9; her daughter Khloe, 7; Angelo, 6; and Briana, a paraprofessional.

MIAMI – “Guys! Choo-choo formation!” At Ana Garcia’s command, a loose knot of people near the turnstiles at Zoo Miami – three adults, five kids – lined up, put their hands on the back shoulders of the person in front of them, and merged into something less locomotive than caterpillar. Sixteen feet proceeded on a motley ramble. Crocodiles awaited in the Everglades section, along with plenty of carefully guided learning.

So it goes on the education frontier.

Over the next few hours, Garcia, a public-school teacher turned pioneer, subtly steered her students toward goals in their personalized education plans. Project-based learning for one. Ecology for another. Speech therapy for another. She put special focus on the three with autism, including her 9-year-old son, Kevin.

Those students, and two others not in attendance, benefit from a learning option that is revolutionary but under the radar: a state-funded education savings account. It’s ESAs that make Garcia’s home education cluster – and perhaps, someday, a never-ending array of other clusters – possible. Without them, the landscapers, Uber drivers and Dollar Tree clerks who’ve entrusted Garcia with the education of their children would be limited to schools that don’t work for their children.

Garcia knows what that’s like. She endured a nightmare school experience with Kevin before getting an ESA for students with special needs. She says it changed his life – and hers.

“Parents don’t have to fear any more that they only have one choice,” Garcia said.

Neither do teachers.

* * *

Ana Garcia has a little Mary Poppins about her, no-nonsense but upbeat, with a drive to stoke curiosity that borders on fantastic. Walt Disney is her hero. Some saw swamp; he saw magic kingdom. Garcia feels that about the landscape in education. Her great-grandmother was a teacher in Cuba. Her aunts were teachers. As a kid, her playroom was furnished with a blackboard and old textbooks, and her dolls were her class. Now when she switches into teacher mode, she decelerates her … rapid … fire … speech … until she’s sure her student is catching on.

“My favorite thing to hear,” she said, “is, ‘Wow miss, no one has ever taught me the way you have, or explained things the way you do.’ “

Garcia loved teaching in district schools. But over the course of a decade, the passion ebbed. Too many mandates. Too much violence. Too little help, in her view, for students with disabilities.

Frustrations began to mount for Garcia the mom, too.

In Pre-K, Kevin was happy and learning in his neighborhood school, in a class with five kids and two teachers. But for kindergarten, he was assigned to an inclusion class with 25 kids, one teacher and one “floating” teacher who toggled between multiple classrooms. Garcia said Kevin’s clothes weren’t being changed when he soiled himself. He wasn’t being fed.

Then Kevin began escaping from class and, somehow, running all the way to a parking lot before being stopped. The first time, Garcia was frightened. The second time, shocked. The third time, angry.

In 2014, after 12 years as a middle school English teacher, curriculum specialist and school-level director for accountability and instruction, Garcia called it quits.

* * *

But this is a story about education in Florida. So that’s not where it ends.

Each of Ana Garcia’s home education students has a personalized education plan, which she’s aligned with the state of Florida’s education standards. Garcia worked in public schools for 12 years as a middle school English teacher, curriculum specialist and school-level director for accountability and instruction.

At the zoo, Garcia’s 11-year-old, Gabriella, took photos of black bears and gopher tortoises so she could create a brochure. Her 7-year-old, Khloe, immersed herself in geography. Kevin collected data from exhibit signs, focusing on adaptive traits like bioluminescence.

Garcia knows where each student stands with their learning plans, which she has aligned with Florida education standards. She nudged each towards their targets.

At the Gator Hole, she shifted attention to Angelo, who is 6 and mostly non-verbal. She pointed to a blue crayfish. “What is that Angelo?” she said.

“A crab,” he said.

Not quite, but close enough. And another step for a boy whose gentle face belies a kid once prone to fighting and biting.

Garcia left the district, but she didn’t leave teaching. She just joined the mutiny.

Her cluster isn’t quite sustainable yet, but education savings accounts gives her hope it can be. The main one in Florida (and biggest in the country) is the Gardiner Scholarship. Created by the Florida Legislature in 2014, it now serves 11,276 students with special needs such as autism and Down syndrome, with nearly 1,900 more on a waiting list. (It’s administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.) Each scholarship is worth about $10,000 a year, and parents can use it for a wide variety of programs and services, including tuition, therapies, tutors, technology, curriculum – whatever a la carte combination they think best.

Angelo’s mom, Vilma Moran, considered several schools. But all wanted to place him in self-contained special education classes where she didn’t think he’d learn. When Angelo started with Miss Ana, he wasn’t talking, didn’t seem to recognize his mom and dad, and showed no emotion.

Now, Angelo loves dinosaurs and laughs at funny videos. Now he greets people by name.

“When we go somewhere, like the zoo, he’ll say, ‘Let’s go see the elephants,’ ” said Moran, who installs fences for a living. “He wasn’t like that two years ago.”

* * *

Kevin is terrified of thunder.

But as Garcia described in The 74, she used the ESA to ease his anxiety – and learn science in the process.

She worked with Kevin’s therapists and tutor to develop lesson plans around the subject of thunder and lightning. The therapists showed him pictures and videos of lightning, taught him calming techniques, and worked with him on articulating why he was scared. The tutor taught him how clouds form and what causes thunder. Knowledge reduced his fear.

“Sometimes, things need to be micro,” Garcia said. In a school district, “you can’t possibly tailor everything to every child. There needs to be a middle ground somewhere. There needs to be a hybrid.”

Garcia envisions a micro-school that can also serve home education students who want part-time services, combined with a center for Applied Behavioral Analysis. In the meantime, she’s the mutineer at the heart of her cluster, connected to a blooming constellation of other clusters.

For example, a paraprofessional, training to becoming a registered behavioral therapist, joined Garcia and Garcia’s husband on the zoo trip. The five autistic students in Garcia’s orbit all go to the same ABA center, but each is served by different speech, occupational and physical therapists. Kevin has his own tutor, a certified teacher who executes a plan Garcia designed. But the tutor also works with other students in other settings. Once education is de-coupled from school, the potential matches of students and teachers becomes infinite.

Garcia arranged swimming lessons at the Y for some of her students, biscuit-making at Red Lobster for others. Music and martial arts classes are on tap, along with lessons in table manners at Cracker Barrel.

So it goes on the frontier.

* * *

The Miami-Dade school district has 350,456 students, counting 68,487 in charter schools. Throw in private schools, and Miami-Dade has 425,000 students. Competition between sectors may be the most intense in America. And if test scores and grad rates are any indication, students are benefitting.

But none of those schools, so good for so many, were good for Kevin and Angelo. Garcia’s micro-cluster is.

Will it last? Garcia thinks it can work financially with a few more students. But it’s complicated on the edge, and there is no trail. She said she’ll keep pressing to figure it out, and more pioneers every day will do the same.

Late last month, the Black Alliance for Educational Options announced Ken Campbell will step down after five years as president of the organization, where he has served in various leadership roles since its founding. Jacqueline Cooper, BAEO’s chief of staff, will be filling in as president while the organization prepares a national search for a new leader.

In the meantime, we caught up with Campbell via a spokeswoman to ask him about what lies ahead and about the he’s seen in the education reform movement during his tenure.

What’s next for you?

I’ll be supporting BAEO until the National Symposium in late March, and my focus right now is on helping facilitate a smooth transition. Other than that, I’m taking a little time to recharge to get ready for the next challenge.

Over your tenure, do you think the tenor of the school choice and education reform has changed? Does it better reflect the voices of low-income and working-class black communities it’s trying to reach, or has it slid backward in some ways?

I do think the tenor of parental choice and education reform has changed in a number of ways. First, we continue to mature as a movement, and we continue to grow each year as states adopt new programs and pass new legislation that focuses on reform in a comprehensive way. We are giving parents more options in places where they are most needed.

However, I think we still have a lot of work to do to level the playing field for our most vulnerable citizens – children from low-income and working class Black families. We need to accelerate the work on increasing the number of high quality educational options available to them, and we need to ensure we stay true to our principles about equity for all children.

I am worried that many Black community stakeholders who should be on our side helping to drive reform are either joining the opposition or standing on the sidelines because they feel like their concerns about the way reform is being implemented are being ignored or because they have no power to help implement the change.

So, I think we must place efforts to authentically engage the Black community more broadly in conversations about education reform higher on our list of priorities. If we are going to sustain the progress we’ve made and continue to grow our efforts over the long haul, we must ensure the people we are trying to help have a voice in shaping and leading the reform efforts in their communities.

Now, more than ever, we need to increase efforts to identify and support Black education reform leaders, like Kaya Henderson in DC, who are on the front lines driving change in their communities; we deeper investments in high-quality Black-led schools of choice; and we need deeper investments in organizations like BAEO that are organizing parents and other community stakeholders in support of reform.

Just last week BAEO helped organize a major rally for school choice in Alabama, one of the last remaining holdouts among states that don’t allow charter schools. What do you see as the next frontiers for progress in the school choice movement?

BAEO understands that we must be willing to fight for the changes our community needs. That means we must organize our families so that at critical points in time, we are ready to march, rally, or take other public action to demonstrate with real clarity, just how critical and urgent this issue is for our children. Having more than 2,500 people – most of them Black – come together to stand up for their right to have access to a high-quality education in Alabama was huge.

I believe we should watch Alabama closely this year, as I think the chances of getting a strong charter school law passed there are very good. I’m also very optimistic that we’ll get a voucher bill passed in Tennessee. And, I don’t think it will happen this year, but we soon will have a good charter school law in Kentucky. Our children need us to continue to fight for them on every frontier of this movement.

If our goal is to respond to the educational needs of disadvantaged communities, can we ignore the other injustices in their lives? How can we help transform the institutions that failed Eric Garner, long before he died at the hands of New York City Police?

These children, overwhelmingly black and brown, are financial assets of the highest order. Despite this, they graduate from high school with limited economic possibilities and, very likely, broken souls. And like many other young black men whose God-given potential has been squandered in schools with long histories of underperformance, they act out in a manner that ultimately becomes criminal. Here we find Garner, who despite being described by his minister as a “gentle giant,” was arrested almost 30 times during his life-cut-short, and more than once for selling loose cigarettes. And while he spent nights in local precincts, and other men like him spent nights in prisons, they again gave the city and the state the right to tax on their behalf. This time, however, it was not for his or their own freedom or safety, but for the ostensible freedom and safety of others. According to Pew, in 2010 black men were six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men. In New York City it costs $167,000 a year to keep a person jailed. The average corrections officer with 10 years on the job makes $60,000 annually.

Charter Schools USA is one of the nation’s largest for-profit charter school management companies, with 58 schools in seven states. But the Florida-based organization also has a charitable arm that’s helping a hardscrabble private school in Haiti.

Students of the Genecoit School of Excellence in Haiti may have a new school building by the end of this year. Charter Schools USA, through its charitable arm, is raising money to help build the private, tuition-free school. PHOTO: Charter Schools USA

The Giving Tree Foundation has pledged to raise $250,000 to build a new tuition-free school in Francois, a remote mountain village about an hour and a half outside of the capital of Port-au-Prince. In addition, Charter Schools USA founder and chief executive officer Jonathan Hage has offered to match the funds.

The new school is slated to open in the fall.

A half-a-million dollars will go a long way in a village where few residents have access to running water and electricity, said Richard Page, vice president of development for CSUSA. Page traveled to Haiti in December with his wife and their two daughters to see the school and help deliver 700 Christmas presents to the local children. For many, it was the first Christmas gift they had ever received.

For now, the Genecoit School of Excellence is in a one-room, dilapidated building. It employs about a dozen teachers and serves 119 students in K-6. There are no laptops or Smart Boards, or even enough books.

“The conditions are so far from what we as Americans could ever imagine,’’ said Page, whose recent trip was documented on CSUSA’s Facebook page. “Yet, the children are bubbly, excited and happy. They put on a fashion show for us. They were on fire for life.’’

Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg helps celebrate the growth of Sacred Heart Catholic School in Florida, and other Catholic schools across the state during the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education bus tour that made a stop in the Tampa Bay area.

Nearly two decades ago, Sacred Heart Catholic School in Pinellas Park, Fla. was on the “death watch list,’’ said Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg. Families struggled to afford private school tuition, enrollment dwindled and tough decisions loomed for school leaders.

Nearly 17 years later, Sacred Heart has more than 200 students and, like other Tampa Bay area Catholic schools, is expecting more growth in the years to come. It’s a success story that owes a lot to ACE.

“It saved these … schools,’’ Lynch told redefinED Wednesday, during a celebration that brought a giant blue RV emblazoned with the University of Notre Dame and ACE logos onto the grounds of Sacred Heart.

The stop was part of a national 50-city tour called Fighting for Our Children’s Future. It’s designed to raise awareness about the value of Catholic education and the profound impact it can have on children’s lives. It also stresses the need to keep Catholic schools relevant, active – and open. More than 1,300 U.S. Catholic schools have closed in the past 20 years.

“I just knew ACE coming to our diocese would be a blessing,’’ Lynch told an audience of students, parents, school donors and ACE leaders. “ACE is grace. It is the catalyst. It’s been the yeast that has raised the leaven – and the Catholic education.”

For retired Air Force Sgt. Greg Parmer, having a K-8 charter school at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., would give military families more and better options for middle school.

For Amanda Madden, who lives on the base with her husband, a technical sergeant, and two sons, such a school would also be an opportunity for something better at the elementary school level.

“I’m more trusting of a school on base as opposed to a public (district) school,” she said.

Quality, convenience, a better fit for military families – supporters of a proposed charter school at MacDill have raised those points repeatedly in recent months as one of the best-known military bases in the country squares off against one of the nation’s biggest school districts. But conspicuously absent from the debate has been the voices of military families themselves.

In interviews with redefinED, Parmer and Madden echoed many of the concerns that other supporters have already raised. At the same time, they offered more detail about frustrations they say led them – and perhaps other military families – to consider the possibility of a charter school.

Greg Parmer, far right, poses with his family and Col. Barry Roeper, far left, recently at MacDill Air Force Base. Parmer is among supporters of a proposed charter school on the base. PHOTO provided by family.

“Most of our families live in Brandon and Riverview (on the other side of town),’’ said Parmer, a father of three who lives near the base. Having a K-8 on base would be a huge plus for them, he said.

The proposed MacDill Charter Academy would serve up to 875 students and is being considered as the base expands housing to accommodate 600 new families. The Hillsborough County School Board voted down the academy application in December, citing problems with the school’s governing structure and other issues. But the school’s backers have appealed, with the state Charter School AppealCommission set to consider the matter on Feb. 24.

Parmer’s concerns focus on middle school options.

MacDill families have few complaints about Tinker Elementary, the A-rated elementary school that’s run by the district on base. But there is some grumbling about Monroe Middle School, which is near the base and earned a C grade from the state this year.

Parmer said he and his wife, Kimberly, who works as a secretary on the base, weren’t necessarily expecting a private-school atmosphere when they learned their daughter and son, and a nephew who lives with the family, would attend Monroe in 2011. But the school turned out to be culture shock for the Parmer kids, who had gone to U.S. Department of Defense schools in Germany and Japan.